"Accusation?" he murmurs, hopelessly. "I do not yet understand of what you accuse me."
"Of your relations with that creature before my very eyes!"
Transported with indignation at these words, he lifts his hand, possessed by a mad impulse to strike her, but he controls himself so far as only to grasp her by the arm.
"Creature!" he exclaims, furiously. "Creature! Are you mad? Olga!--why, Olga is pure as an angel, more spotless than a snowflake before it has touched the earth."
"I have no faith in such purity. If she has not actually fallen, her passion is plainly shown in her eyes. But there shall be no open scandal,--she must go. I will not have her in the house,--she must go!"
"She must go!" Treurenberg repeats, in horror. "You would turn her out of doors,--a young, inexperienced, beautiful girl? Selina, I will go, and the sooner the better for all I care, but she must stay."
"How you love her!" sneers the Countess.
For a moment there is silence in the room. Lato gazes at his wife as if she were something strange which he had never seen before,--gazes at her in amazement mingled with horror. His patience is at an end; he forgets everything in the wild desire to break asunder the fetters which have bound him for so long, to be rid of the self-control which has so tortured him.
"Yes," he says, raising his voice, "I love her,--love her intensely, unutterably; but this is the first time that I have admitted it even to myself, and you have brought me to do so. I have struggled against this passion night and day, have denied its existence, have done all that I could to stifle it, and I have tried to the utmost to be reconciled with you, to begin with you a new life in which I could hope to forget her. How you have seconded me you know. Of one thing, however, I can assure you,--the last word has been uttered between you and myself; it would not avail you now though you should sue for a reconciliation on your knees. A woman without tenderness or compassion I abhor. I have a horror of you!" He turns sway, and the door closes behind him.
"Where is the Count?" Frau von Harfink asks a servant, at lunch, where Treurenberg's place is vacant.